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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27738457">on fine grain sand</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21'>Ladybug_21</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Queen's Gambit (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Harry Beltik Deserves All the Good Things, Including a Nice Doctor Girlfriend, Scientists in Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:06:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27738457</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Beltik was always going to be four moves behind Beth Harmon. Fortunately, not every chess-playing woman in Harry's life views the world exclusively in terms of the game.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Harmon &amp; Annette Packer, Harry Beltik &amp; Beth Harmon, Harry Beltik/Annette Packer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>on fine grain sand</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Because oh my god, I so so so wanted Beth and Annette to become friends both times they met; and I also just wanted Harry to be HAPPY, goddamnit. I own no rights to <em>The Queen's Gambit</em>. And the title is from the taxonomy mnemonic that I learned in biology class as a kid: Kings Play Chess On Fine Grain Sand.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry didn't look back as he drove away from Henry Clay High School and the Kentucky State Championship, away from the world that he'd gently laid to rest as his past, away from the austere brick building where he'd first met Beth Harmon.  Away from the bewildering woman herself, with her wan skin, and her too-wide eyeliner around unfocused eyes, and her gait unsteady in the way that his father's had been his entire childhood.  <em>The pride and the sorrow of chess</em>.  Another Morphy, another soul becoming increasingly lost within the repeating pattern of the chessboard squares.  Another genius who could reason through any pattern of moves except for the ones in her own life.</p><p>Harry's grip tightened on the steering wheel of his new car as he recalled the earnest girl with the severe haircut and the intense stare that had haunted him since that first encounter five years prior.  Now, as then, her steady gaze challenged him to somehow become more than he had ever needed to be.</p><p>"Shit," Harry muttered finally, and with a sigh, he turned his car around.</p><p>The tournament was just beginning when Harry slipped inside, earnest young men and even a few women hunched over tables, watching one another's hands with wary eyes.  A single sweep of his gaze across the drab colors of the space made it more than clear that Beth Harmon and her fiery hair were not present.  Still, Harry decided to wait, amid the gentle taps of fingers hitting clocks and the soft scratches of pencils marking moves and the underlying reek of high schoolers' stale sweat.  By this stage in her career, Beth would no longer have any reason to pace outside the gym in thought during a tournament like this one, but if she wasn't efficiently cleaning up an opponent at present, perhaps he'd missed her outside as she submitted her scoresheet or loitered in wait for her next victim.</p><p>Harry's thoughts were so trained on whether Beth would appear in one corner of the room or another that he was startled to find a young woman standing right next to him, grinning shyly.</p><p>"You're Harry Beltik, right?" she asked; and Harry, who by this point was used to living quietly in the shadow of Beth Harmon, blinked in surprise at being recognized and nodded.  "Annette Packer.  I remember seeing you play here, five years ago."</p><p>"You remember seeing Beth Harmon wipe the floor with me, you mean," he corrected her with a rueful laugh.</p><p>"Oh, you put up a very good fight, if I recall correctly," Annette smiled.  "And if you had to lose, well, better to Beth Harmon than to anyone else."</p><p>Harry nodded, his mouth twisted into a sad smile.  Losing at chess to Beth was one thing.  Losing his heart to her was another thing entirely.</p><p>"Have you seen her, by the way?" Annette asked.  "I said hello to her just outside, and I've been in here since play started, but..."</p><p>Harry shook his head.  So that was that, then.  Beth Harmon had fled the site of her initial crowning as Kentucky State Champion, forfeiting her title—and for what?  He thought about Beth's harsh words, about his assistant manager position at the supermarket.  Even if Harry hadn't had his electrical engineering studies, at least he was still <em>stable</em>.  At least he still knew how to accept help when it was offered.</p><p>"She's gone," he told Annette quietly.  "I should go, too."</p><p>"You're not here to play, either?" Annette asked, her head tilted in polite confusion.</p><p>"I came to see her," shrugged Harry.</p><p>To his surprise, Annette laughed.</p><p>"Yeah," she said.  "So did I.  But it's nice to have seen you, at least.  And I'm glad I recognized you.  I almost didn't, actually, given..."</p><p>She grinned toothily and gestured at her teeth.  Harry blinked, then nodded sheepishly before making his way back to his car.  He considered driving past Beth's house, just to make sure she'd made it back, but decided against.  Beth knew how to reach him, if she needed help.  And Harry could only accept so much rejection from one girl.</p><hr/><p>Harry didn't often play chess in public, now that he'd set aside his identity as former Kentucky State Champion and embraced the more quotidian roles he had carved out for himself.  But in the days following Beth's rejection of his help—his friendship—he found himself replaying events over and over in his head, even more aggressively than he had in the empty bathrooms of Beth's house when he'd lived there.  Harry was a formidable chess player, but he lacked the conceptual brilliance of a Benny Watts; and so he pulled out his old chessboard and spent his spare time musing over his old games against Beth from that odd stint of cohabitation.  Her playing, after all, was the clearest window into her mind that Harry would ever have—and even if he had always lacked the sheer intuition that Beth had, Harry was an excellent student of other players' strategies.</p><p>He was in the midst of one such mental exercise one day, seated under a tree in the middle of the quad at the university, when Annette Packer stumbled once more into his life.</p><p>"Harry Beltik?" she asked, smiling with surprised delight.</p><p>Harry had been so caught up in the game that he was reviewing—and, almost as importantly, in his memory of how Beth's shirt draped off her shoulder as they'd played this round—that it took him a moment to place Annette when he glanced up.</p><p>"Annette," she reminded him, one hand gracefully gesturing in self-reference.  "We met at the chess tournament."</p><p>"So we did," laughed Harry, embarrassed.  "Um, are you a student here?"</p><p>"Pre-med," Annette nodded.  "I didn't realize that you were, too.  Unless you're here for chess-related reasons?"</p><p>"Oh, no.  Electrical engineering."  He quirked a smile.  "Thought it was time to give up being a chess bum and put my brain to use."</p><p>"A different use," Annette suggested gently.  "I'd say it was doing plenty before.  How do you like it?"</p><p>Harry wasn't sure if she meant electrical engineering or college or the world beyond chess, so he simply shrugged.  Annette's shoulders shook in a little puff of laughter, and then she glanced down at his chessboard.</p><p>"You absolutely don't have to say yes," she prefaced, "but would you play me?"</p><p>Harry raised his eyebrows.</p><p>"Right here, right now?"</p><p>"It'll be a very quick game, I promise," Annette grinned.  "I haven't played in years and years.  But I was Beth Harmon's first win at the State Championship back in '63.  And I guess I'd love to say that I've lost to not one, but two of the greatest chess players of our time."</p><p>Harry considered telling Annette that she was exaggerating, but it had been a long time since anyone had so unabashedly expressed admiration for his chess-playing.  Beth Harmon certainly hadn't—she had been kind, naturally, but although she told him that he'd taught her a lot, they both really knew that he hadn't.  And Harry was a chess whiz, but he also was a young man in his mid-twenties who enjoyed having his ego stroked by a nice-looking girl, every once in a while.  So he gestured for Annette to take a seat opposite him as he cleared the chessboard of any evidence of Beth Harmon's genius, aligned the pieces into their comforting lines of eight, white for Annette and black for him.</p><p>It was a quick game, but not quite as quick as Harry had expected.  Annette wasn't State Champion material, but she also wasn't at all bad.  Harry could see her thought processes almost as clearly as if she were spelling things out for him in real time as her fingers hovered over her bishop and she considered its next move (its obvious move) with a patient but determined smile.</p><p>"Let me guess, high school champion, captain of your chess club?" he grinned, as she tipped her king.</p><p>"I really enjoyed playing," Annette shrugged.  "Knew I was never gonna be anything spectacular, but I was good enough to get a real rush out of it, you know?"  She paused and reconsidered who she was talking to.  "Yeah, what am I saying, I definitely think <em>you</em> know."</p><p>Harry watched her for a moment.</p><p>"Will you find it super, super obnoxious if I tell you where you went wrong?" he said finally.</p><p>"Which time?" Annette laughed.</p><p>"Every time," Harry said seriously, setting the pieces back up so he could recreate their game.  "You can't get better at this unless you evaluate all of your past mistakes very critically.  Okay, so first, we started with a Caro-Kann, which meant when you moved your knight like this..."</p><p>And Harry was pleasantly startled to realize that Annette, far from being bored, was actually <em>listening</em> to all of his advice, with far more interest than Beth ever had.</p><hr/><p>Harry started keeping his chessboard in his backpack when he was on campus, just in case he happened to see Annette again.  To his shock, though, the next time he saw her in the quad, they didn't even talk about chess.  Instead, she ended up telling him all about her biology and chemistry classes, about how she wanted to be a neurological researcher, about why she found nerve cells and the synaptic jolts of energy that jumped between them so fascinating.</p><p>"It's funny, I almost think that it was playing chess that got me interested in all of it," she said at last, finally weaving the thread that connected them into the conversation.  "I mean, thinking about people like you, like Benny Watts, like Borgov, like Beth Harmon... it's impossible not to wonder how your minds work.  I wanted to try to pick that all apart, to see if I could break it all down into logical rules and figure it out."</p><p>"Doesn't that get rid of some of the mystery for you, though?" asked Harry, a bit unnerved at the fact that a pretty girl was talking so casually about picking apart his brain, as if he were some computer whose chips and circuitry could be scrutinized.</p><p>"Maybe some of the mystery," she shrugged.  "But I get the feeling that knowing how it all fits together would only make me wonder at it all the more.  Even if I could explain half of why the mind does what it does, I'd still have to marvel that it works that way in the first place."</p><p>"So, why med school, then?  Why not just go the straight research route?"</p><p>"I like the idea of helping others," Annette explained.  "Making damaged people whole, all that.  Kinda corny, I know, but that's been the dream since before I knew what a chessboard was.  Anyway, enough about me.  What made you choose electrical engineering?"</p><p>Harry had to think about that one for a moment.</p><p>"It was the telecommunications aspect of it, really," he said slowly.  "My turn to be corny, I guess.  I liked the idea of helping people stay even better connected."</p><p>"That's really nice," Annette smiled.</p><p>"Seriously, though," Harry continued.  "You know, most laypeople think that chess is all analysis, all moody geniuses brooding in hotel rooms, poring over old manuals and their games.  And fine, yeah, there's a lot of that.  But you've seen the way that people talk with each other even just at the Kentucky State Championship.  Imagine that times a thousand, and <em>that's</em> what you get at a national or international tournament—the greatest chess players in the world sitting around, discussing their favorite strategies, waxing philosophic over old games and famous players' signature moves.  Yeah, chess is about strategy and practice and grit, but it's also about <em>community</em>.  That's always been my favorite part of it, at any rate.  Thanks to chess, I have friends in New York, Houston, San Francisco, even Toronto.  We're like one big neural network, with little chess synapses jumping between us."</p><p>Annette laughed outright at that, and then noticed that she was running late for class.</p><p>"Shoot, I've gotta go," she said, scooping up all of her books.  "But it was great seeing you.  No chance you wanna humiliate me in another game of chess sometime, is there?"</p><p>"Any time," grinned Harry.</p><p>"Here, on Tuesday at lunch, maybe?  I don't have class until two."</p><p>And Harry agreed, his heart pounding uncharacteristically fast all through his afternoon classes.  But early on Sunday evening, as Harry was sitting down to a quiet, solitary little dinner, Matt and Mike came pounding at his door, hollering that <em>Benny Watts</em> had just called and told them all to get to New York as quickly as possible.  "He reminded us that the Soviets think in teams, and even if Beth is in Moscow, we have to be hers," Matt insisted, Mike nodding vigorously beside him.  And of course Harry grabbed some belongings quickly and jumped in the twins' car without a second thought, because chess was his community, and he was part of Beth's neural network, whether she wanted him to be or not.  (Plus, getting invited to stay first at Beth Harmon's home, and then at Benny Watts's?  This would be a point of pride to tell the grandkids, one day.)</p><p>Beth's victory against Borgov was halfway across the globe, but her friends treated it like they had witnessed with their own eyes.  When the game was called on the radio, they shouted in excitement, hugging each other, pounding each other's backs.  Benny broke his own rules and pulled out a bottle of champagne that he'd been saving, just in case, and the whole lot got very happily tipsy, then burst from the basement of the brownstone and caroused happily through the streets of the city until they were exhausted.  Only the next morning on the car ride home, slightly hungover but with as much giddiness as booze, did Harry realize he was missing his chess date with Annette.  Once Matt and Mike had gotten the full reason for Harry's sudden melancholy out of him, he had to endure their gentle teasing throughout the remaining nine hours' worth of drive back to Lexington.</p><p>Harry wouldn't have been surprised if Annette had never spoken to him again, but when he turned up on campus on Wednesday morning, sleep-deprived from catching up on homework and still stiff from the car ride home, she was waiting for him at their usual table under the tree in the quad, reading a novel.</p><p>"Wow, you must think I'm a total flake," he sighed, sitting down across from her.</p><p>Annette looked up at the sound of his voice with a smile.</p><p>"And you must think I'm a total space cadet, for scheduling a chess date just before the final game of the Moscow Invitational!" she retorted, setting her novel down.  "When did you get back from New York?"</p><p>When Harry stared at her in confusion, trying to figure out how Annette had even known that that was where he'd been, she grinned and slid that morning's edition of <em>The Herald Leader</em> at him.  Beth's face, framed by her flawless hair and her perfect coat and hat, stared proudly out at him from the cover, her chin raised defiantly, and Harry's breath caught at how far his stunning former lover and dear friend had come from that quiet little girl five years prior.  When he finally managed to tear his eyes away and skim Townes's article, he grinned to see that the reporter had referenced how the Lexington chess crowd had charged straight up to New York to be there for Beth when she needed them.</p><p>"Late yesterday evening," he finally replied to Annette, closing the paper.  "I'm so sorry, Annette."</p><p>"Don't be sorry!"  Annette's eyes sparkled, and she pulled her own chessboard from her backpack.  "And we can play that second round another day.  First, show me as best as you can remember how you helped Beth figure out how to open up her queen file.  I want to hear how you incredible geniuses sat down and worked out all of the possibilities."</p><hr/><p>Beth Harmon was the most brilliant person that Harry had ever met, because she was the most brilliant chess player in the entire world, and it was nothing more than the craziest of flukes that she happened to be from the same town as him, and around the same age as him, and somehow one of his most beloved friends.  But Beth's genius came with a razor-sharp edge of competition, one that she honed to a fine point with her studying and her uncompromising nature, one that could all too easily cut her friends and most of all herself.  Harry had been dazzled by the keenness of that edge for years, by the fact that it could slice through the Soviets' game like no other American's could.  But over the few weeks that he had observed the maintenance of that edge up close, Harry realized that it simply wasn't for him, the way that a life of chess and nothing but chess simply wasn't for him.  He would always be there for Beth, of course; to provide her with the tools she needed to keep herself as sharp as possible; and to gently pry those same tools from her hands, when she became dangerously close to grinding herself too far down.  He knew that all of their friends would do the same, that all except the most sore losers that Beth had ever faced would do the same, down to Borgov himself.</p><p>What Harry needed in his personal life, though, was someone with a mind just as sharp who didn't constantly yearn to wield it in competition.  Annette was not a mad genius like Beth, but she was brilliant in her own way, in how her mind parsed the science of neurons and transmitters and synapses.  When they studied together, Harry sometimes stole glances at how she regarded her textbooks with the same patient determination that she turned towards a chessboard.  Science, Annette had explained to him over one of their games, was a bit like chess—all about learning what the rules were, which set the player up best for success, when to retreat back a step or two in the hopes of corralling resources for a later rebuttal to a failed forward advance.  Harry viewed his own engineering field with considerably less poetry and far greater pragmatism, but he loved how Annette saw such beauty in every aspect of her life.</p><p>Liza Harmon, reigning queen of chess, returned from a flurry of accolades in Moscow via New York, where she spent two weeks before finally heading southwest down to Lexington.</p><p>"Dinner?" she asked without preamble when Harry picked up the phone.  "I owe Matt and Mike, too, of course, but I thought I'd start with you."</p><p>Harry took a deep breath.</p><p>"Just the two of us?" he asked.  "Or would you mind if I brought along someone who's been a fan of yours for a long time?"</p><p>"Oh?"</p><p>"Annette Packer."  Harry smiled at the mere thought of the future doctor.  "Your first game in your first tournament."</p><p>"That sounds great," Beth said.  "Yeah, please do invite her along, if she's interested.  I'd love to see both of you, together."</p><p>And Beth clearly did.  Harry and Annette sat side by side in the booth of the fancy steakhouse that Beth had chosen, their shoulders almost touching, Beth grinning at them from across the table as the three laughed and toasted one another.  It occurred to Harry that Beth, spinning through the male-dominated chess world for most of her teenage years, probably had never had a real chance to meet girls like Annette, who were serious-minded and studious and wanted to know all about Beth's endgame, but also wanted to know where she'd bought her dress and gotten her hair done.  It warmed Harry's heart to see them smiling at each other: Beth, his first, reckless love, with whom Harry would always associate the game that had brought them together; and Annette, the woman for whom chess had been a beginning to her relationship with Harry, but hopefully would not be an end.</p><p>"God, she's wonderful," Annette grinned as Harry drove her home.  "And so fashionable!  I'm serious, Harry, I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to be a genius and that gorgeous and that put-together, and still be such a nice person, but Beth manages to do it all."</p><p>Harry shrugged, smiling, his eyes still on the road, because that precise line of thinking was what went through his head every time he spotted Annette across the quad.  He considered telling Annette that Beth, for all her glamor, had her share of serious flaws; but he knew that she had seen Beth the day she fled the State Championship, and he suspected that one day, Beth might want to confide in Annette about such matters herself.  The two women had shared some internal joke between them over dinner, about Annette's being there for a first for Beth that most of the world didn't know about, and Harry decided to let them have their own secret there, if they weren't inclined to share it with him.  He hoped that that secret alone would provide enough of a scaffolding for a true friendship to grow and blossom.</p><p>"Hey, Harry?"  Annette turned on her doorstep to face him.  "I had a really nice time tonight.  Thanks for inviting me."</p><p>"I was so glad you could make it," Harry smiled.</p><p>And then Annette reached out a hand and placed it gently on the back of Harry's head so she could pull him closer for a kiss, her tongue lightly brushing between his lips against his now-flawless teeth.</p><p>"Wow," Harry whispered when she pulled away from him, his heart pounding.</p><p>"You, uh, wanna come inside?" Annette asked, her cheeks flushed.</p><p>Harry had once needed to take a moment to tell Beth Harmon that he was ready.  But he had been ready for Annette Packer since the moment he met her, so he nodded and followed her in.</p><p>Sex with Beth had always felt a bit like an extension of her chess-playing; she got impatient if things were going too slowly, her mind was always clearly working faster than Harry's could even when he wasn't pressing his body against a gorgeous woman, and Beth always played to <em>win</em>.  Making love with Annette was a slower process of exploration, of communication, with its moments of adrenaline but also its moments of pause, no imaginary clock counting down the seconds in the background.  Harry had left chess because he had become exhausted by its unrelenting pace, by its cheerful ferocity, by the fact that his ambitions turned him into someone he didn't necessarily want to be.  His few weeks with Beth had been some of the most important of his life, not only because it had shown him that they weren't meant to be, but because it had shown him that he would be happiest in a life that moved at a different pace.  And lying next to Annette that evening, Harry realized that he had just found a comfortable pace that worked infinitely better for him.</p><p>"You're really something, you know that?" yawned Annette, curling up against Harry.</p><p>"<em>You're </em>really something," said Harry, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.  "How did you know that I'd spent weeks wondering if I would ever have enough nerve to kiss you?"</p><p>"Oh, just something in your eyes whenever you saw me in the quad.  And the way you looked so mortified when you missed our chess date because you were helping the World Champion win her game against Borgov, which <em>any</em> sane person would have excused even if she weren't one of your old friends.  And the fact that you invited me to dinner with Beth Harmon this evening but spent more time looking at me than at her, even though she's probably the most extraordinary person that either of us will ever meet."</p><p>"Oof," Harry laughed.  "That obvious, huh?"</p><p>"Yeah."  Annette smiled at him.  "You know, that first round I played against Beth, she was so new to this whole world that I had to teach her three really basic things, straight off the bat.  Chess clocks, which remind us that we each have a finite amount of time to make all our moves.  And scoresheets, which help us remember how we made it to the next step or not."</p><p>"And?" Harry prompted.</p><p>"And touch-move."  Annette shifted so she could kiss Harry again, slowly and languidly.  "I've learned that touch-move is a good rule in more than just chess, Harry.  Saves a lot of embarrassment and tears to avoid touching until you know that a piece is one that you really want to invest in moving.  I wasn't gonna reach out until I knew that you really were on my side of the board.  And after dinner tonight, I knew you were."</p><p>The next morning, Harry awoke to an empty bed and the sound of the radio blaring tinnily from the kitchen.  Annette was dancing to music as she made breakfast, a spatula in one hand for intermittently scrambling eggs, her face bright and wholesome.  For the briefest of moments, Harry recalled a morning when he'd caught Beth Harmon dancing to her own music and felt so overwhelmed that he could do nothing more than stare.  But when Annette saw Harry, her smile broadened, and she beckoned to him with a toss of her head, inviting him into the warmth and comfort of her space.  And Harry, shaking loose his old memories, grinned and stepped forward to grab Annette's hand and twirl her as she laughed.</p>
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